DATE: 1814.
WHAT THEY ARE: Two of the three surviving peace pipes presented by Major General William Henry Harrison to the Delaware, Shawnee, and Wyandot Indian tribes at the Second Treaty Council of Greenville, Ohio, on behalf of President James Madison.
WHAT THEY LOOK LIKE: The pipes are made of sterling silver and have an S-shaped stem and an urn-shaped bowl with a hinged cover with beaded edges and acanthus leaves in Federal style engraved at the base. The bowls are 2 inches in diameter. From the mouthpiece to the bowl the overall length of the Delaware pipe is 16 inches, the Shawnee pipe 20 inches. The bowls have four oval medallions adorned and engraved as follows: a scene of a Native American and an American general shaking hands; an eagle derived from the Great Seal of the United States; two hands clasped above the inscription “Peace and Friendship”; and the legend, for the Delaware pipe, “Presented by Maj. Gen. Harrison to the Delaware Tribe of Indians 1814,” and for the Shawnee pipe, “Presented by Maj. Gen. Harrison on behalf of the U.S. to the Shawanoese Tribe of Indians 1814.” The pipes were originally identical, but the stem of the Delaware pipe was broken and the repair altered the angle of the stem, which perhaps accounts for its stem being shorter than that of the Shawnee pipe.
His name was Wabozo, or Snowshoe Hare, but he was commonly called the Mysterious One because he could change his appearance to any shape he desired, just as the hare can metamorphose from brown to snowy white during the winter. Born to a mortal mother and an immortal father countless ages ago, the young man headed west over prairies and plains and mountains in search of the Creator—his father—because of his growing concern that his people were becoming self-absorbed and losing their spiritual identity. And when Wabozo found the Creator, his eternal father gave him a pipe for his people to smoke so that their thoughts and prayers and words would become visible to the Creator in the form of tobacco smoke, and the Creator would be able to give the people proper guidance. Over time the peace pipe born of this Native American legend became not just a holy object, a tool of prayer, but a sign or offering of friendship.
In 1814 the U.S. government presented three peace pipes to indigenous tribes as gifts of thanks for their pledge to fight on America’s side against the British in the War of 1812. While these frontier pipes were strictly items of diplomacy, compositionally and structurally inconsistent with an authentic peace pipe—a sacred instrument of prayer—they nonetheless represented the amity between the two groups and their evolving relations. But for the Indians, who entered into a second treaty at Greenville, Ohio, in the wake of disastrous defeats and the death of the Shawnee warrior Tecumseh, the agreement more or less meant the beginning of their end. Weakened until they could no longer significantly resist the Americans, who usurped and settled their land, the Indians faced the dawn of a new era, and the pipes became tangible symbols of their reluctant acquiescence to the new order.
Some historical context will shed light on the circumstances that led up to the presentation of the silver pipes in 1814. The Revolutionary War brought independence to America but left Americans anxious to push the country’s borders westward, even if such settlement encroached on the natural rights of the native inhabitants of the lands. For its part, the U.S. government had tried to prevent Americans from settling on Indian land. When war with England broke out in 1775, the Continental Congress had ordered Americans not to settle on Indian land out of fear that the Indians, who were fierce and powerful fighters, would side with the British in their fight against the colonists. The Continental Congress’s policy was only moderately successful. Although force was sometimes used to keep colonists from moving onto Indian land, the settlers were resolute in their determination to live, hunt, and work on lands to the west. This resulted in fierce Indian attacks on colonial settlements in Kentucky, Ohio, New York, and Pennsylvania, where the Iroquois and other tribes lived.
The Native American tribes were still viable after the Revolutionary War, so it was in the interests of the new American government to keep relations between the Indians and American citizens cordial and peaceful. It was the position of the American government that Indian land belonged to the Indians, and the government’s War Department set up posts in Indian country not only to maintain cordiality but to establish a system of fair trade with them through recognized agents and prevent unscrupulous white traders from swindling the natives.
Still, Americans turned their backs on government policy and continued to settle lands not ceded. In defiance of the encroachment, the Indians, despite the treaties they negotiated with the U.S. government, menaced the settlers. American troops were sent to impose peace, and one such expedition, led by General Arthur St. Clair, resulted in a clash with Indians on the Wabash River during the summer of 1791 and ended in the loss of six hundred soldiers.
With Indian raids in the west endangering American settlement, President George Washington ordered General Anthony Wayne in the spring of 1792 to lead troops in the Northwest Territory against the frontier Indians. The following year Wayne commenced a campaign against the Indians, who were receiving encouragement from British troops in the area. As they moved north, building forts along their line of progress, Wayne’s troops were attacked by Indians, but on August 20, 1794, “Mad Anthony” brought about the defeat of the united Northwest Indians at Fallen Timbers in Ohio, and then continued to harass them and destroy their villages without interference from the British. Wayne finally called a meeting, and from mid-June through early August 1795, delegates from the Delaware, Shawnee, Wyandot, Kaskaskia, Miami, Pottawatomie, Chippewa, Wea, Kickapoo, Ottawa, Eel River, and Piankashaw met at Fort Greenville, Ohio. The defeated and demoralized chiefs were compelled to comply with Wayne’s demands, and in the Treaty of Greenville, signed on August 3, 1795, they ceded Indian claims to the Ohio Valley, involving some 25,000 square miles.
On August 7, General Wayne announced to the gathering of tribes: “Listen! All you Nations present. I have hitherto addressed you as brothers. I now adopt you all, in the name of the President and Fifteen Great Fires of America, as their children, and you are so accordingly. The medals which I shall have the honor to deliver to you, you will consider as presented by the hands of your father, the Fifteen Fires of America. These you will hand down to your children’s children, in commemoration of this day—a day in which the United States of America gives peace to you and all your Nations, and receives you and them under the protecting wings of her eagle.” The next day the medals were distributed to the tribes, and some time after this first Greenville treaty engraved silver peace medals were distributed to signers of the treaty, including Chief White Swan of the Wea tribe, a sub-tribe of the Miami (Kansas City Museum, Kansas City, Missouri), and Chief Tarhe (also known as “The Crane”) of the Wyandot (Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia).
Soon, Americans settled the Ohio Valley and moved on further—to lands inhabited by the dislodged Indians. Tecumseh, a brilliant chief of the Shawnee tribe who envisioned an Indian nation separate from that of the white men, traveled far and wide in an attempt to unite the many Indian tribes in resisting American attempts to take still more of their land, but he was successful only to a limited extent. Some Indian chiefs such as the Miami chief Little Turtle instead advocated peace and continued to enter into treaties with the U.S. government.
The governor of the territory of Indiana—later the states of Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Illinois, and a small part of Minnesota—William Henry Harrison, was concerned by the Shawnees’ disruption of peace in the Wabash Valley and angered by Tecumseh’s refusal to recognize the Indian land cessions. Harrison made it his goal to expel the Indians from the Northwest Territory, from which the Indiana Territory had been carved, and which now consisted essentially of the land that later formed the state of Ohio. Harrison gathered an army at the Tippecanoe River, near the village of Tecumseh’s brother, Prophet. The Native Americans, alarmed, advanced on the white soldiers, but they were repelled and their village torched.
During the War of 1812 Tecumseh joined forces with the British, hoping that a Redcoat victory would enable him to realize his dream of a separate Indian nation. But the British were defeated, and in the Battle of the Thames in Canada, the Shawnee Indian leader was killed while fighting off the advancing Americans. Debilitated and now further set upon by encroaching settlers, the Indians were compelled through additional treaties to cede more lands. The Second Treaty Council of Greenville, Ohio, was held on July 8, 1814, and not only provided for the Indians to give up more land but served to formally uphold the cessions made over the years and to recognize the Indians’ support of the United States in its fight for independence from England. Here, on behalf of President James Madison, Major General William Henry Harrison presented silver peace pipes to the Delaware, Shawnee, and Wyandot Indian tribes that attended the treaty council. Representatives from each tribe received a pipe from Harrison; for the Shawnee, it was Blackhoof, one of his tribe’s delegates to the U.S. government; for the Wyandot it was Chief Tarhe.
Over the years the U.S. government had bestowed gifts on Indian tribes when they ceded land to the government, but the Harrison peace pipes were the most elegantly adorned pipes it ever commissioned for the Indians. They were not meant to be smoked—their silver composition and the shape of their bowls would have made that difficult—but were rather “presentation pieces,” made to symbolize the cordial relations between the giver and the recipients, and at the treaty Harrison expounded on the meaning of the pipes. Authentic Indian pipes, those smoked for religious purposes, were usually made of stone and wood. Harrison’s long, slender pipes with their engraved silver bowls were all in one piece as opposed to the normal pwagan, or peace pipe, which comprised separate bowls and stems joined together to form one piece. As most of the Indian language was (and remains) verbs, or action words, so too was the peace pipe considered a tool of action, as it created a link to the Creator.
The pipe given by William Henry Harrison to the Shawnees in 1814. Its stem is intact, unlike the surviving Delaware pipe, which as a repair made on its stem.
But a peace pipe was also a religious action tool, in that its pwag ne, or rising smoke, made the smoker’s thoughts and words and prayers visible to the Creator. The Creator in the Indian concept was not an entity on whom was bestowed worship and praise, as in the Judeo-Christian concept, but was rather considered an egalitarian being, having created the earth equal to heaven. Different Indian tribes have different traditions about the origin of their pipes. For several tribes in the Ohio Valley, it derived from Wabozo.
According to Indian tradition, tobacco is the means of prayer. A person asking a favor would give a gift of tobacco, and the person fulfilling the favor would smoke it. Offerings of tobacco had long ago replaced blood sacrifice in prayer, a transition in Indian theology akin to the New Testament replacing the Old Testament in Christianity.
It is not known where or by whom the Harrison treaty pipes were made, but it is possible they were fashioned by a silversmith in Philadelphia or Montreal, where pipes at the time were sometimes made. It is also not known how the Delaware, Shawnee, and Wyandot pipes were used after their receipt from Harrison, since they were not smoking pipes (later testing of the pipes revealed that the Shawnee pipe was never smoked, but there was some evidence of smoking in the Delaware pipe); presumably the pipes were kept wrapped and brought out on special occasions. The Wyandot pipe seems to have disappeared from history, and its whereabouts are unknown.
William Henry Harrison's defeat of the Indians in November 1811 led to great popularity, an 1840 campaign slogan with running mate John Tyler of "Tippecanoe and Tyler too!" and a decisive election to the office of president of the United States.
The injustice of Americans exacting cessions from Indians whose land they trespassed and settled on is manifest. Indeed, the first colony in North America was founded by the English navigator Sir Humphrey Gilbert, whose 1578 charter authorized him “to discover and to take possession of such remote, heathen and barbarous lands as were not actually possessed by a Christian prince or people.” Unwittingly, perhaps, the spirit of this haughty notion was aggressively embraced by Americans in their newly independent republic in the late eighteenth century. But the acquisition of land from the North American Indians was actually nothing new at this time; the French, British, Dutch, and Spanish over the course of a few hundred years had all colonized North America, trading for land or seizing it in battles.
The peace pipes presented to the Indian tribes at the Second Treaty Council of Greenville played an important role in the negotiation of the treaty in which the Delaware “ceded to the U.S. all claim to the thirteen sections [a section is 640 acres] of land given to them by an act of Congress March 3, 1807.” The Delaware, Shawnee, and Wyandot were granted a nine-square-mile tract of land with unrestricted rights.
Today Harrison’s peace pipes are not just reminders of the treaties early-nineteenth-century American Indians were compelled to enter into, but of the natives’ spirit of willingness, if not forced resignation, to live in harmony with white men even when they had to give up their land to do so. Indeed, besides being symbols of the establishment of relations between Indians and early Americans, the pipes are emblematic of the early evolution of the midwestern United States. At the time, the pipes testified to the United States’ appreciation of the concessions made by the Indians and its hope for renewed friendship, a bond which would unfortunately be stained by further bloodshed on both sides as the rest of the century unfolded.
LOCATIONS:
Delaware peace pipe: National Museum of Natural History, Washington, D.C.
Shawnee peace pipe: The Kansas City Museum, Kansas City, Missouri.*
*The Delaware peace pipe came to the National Museum of Natural History, which is part of the Smithsonian Institution, as a private gift from Victor Evans. The Shawnee peace pipe was acquired by a Civil War veteran named Daniel Dyer, who, with his wife, Ida, collected Indian relics. Daniel Dyer became an Indian agent, first at the Quapaw Agency in Kansas, where he appears to have been respected by Native Americans, then at Fort Reno, Oklahoma, where his habit of requesting soldiers every time he thought the Indians were ready to go on the warpath caused Generals Nelson A. Miles and Philip Sheridan to come to investigate; after one summer at Fort Reno, Dyer was removed from his post as agent. Although most of the artifacts, particularly the quality pieces, in the “Dyer Collection” were acquired by Ida, the Dyers divorced in 1897 (for the second time; they first divorced in 1876 and then remarried the same year) and the entire collection became the property of Daniel. In 1898 the Dyer Collection went on loan to the Kansas City Board of Education, and it became the board’s property in 1910. In 1939, several small museums and historical societies merged into the Kansas City Museum, and the Dyer Collection, along with the Kansas City Board of Education’s collection of artifacts, became one of the museum’s founding collections.